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[Kei>rimed from The Amekhian Historilal Review, Vol. XI., No. 4, July, 1906. J 

E n5 



GAPS IN THE PL:UL1SHED RECORDS OF UNITED 
STATES HISTORY! 

In the spring of 1902 the Queen of the Netherlands issued a man- 
date to some ten of the foremost historical scholars of her kingdom, 
constituting them a Commission of Advice for National Historical 
Publications. Meeting from time to time, and proceeding with 
proper Dutch deliberation, the commission elaborated a valuable and 
suggestive report, which was presented nearly two years later.- In 
this they take up in a methodical manner the general aspects and the 
various subdivisions of the national history, and discuss carefully 
under each head the state of the original materials requisite for thor- 
ough knowledge and the question what portions of that materia! have 
been made accessible in print and what portions still remain that 
ought to be published. The whole proceeding was eminently Dutch, 
characteristic of a cautious and prudent nation, that can atTord the 
time to do things on a right plan. Great as is the mass of published 
material for the history of the Netherlands, the government itself had 
in the last seventy years done much less of this work than several 
of the other European governments. There was a general feeling 
that more should be done. Fuit those who had the matter most at 
heart had no mind that the government should proceed haphazard, 
printing this or that body of documentary material because it had 
been often talked of, or because some enthusiast, having for the first 
time made its acquaintance, had conceived an exaggerated notion of 
its importance and had persuaded some facile official to let him print 
it at government expense after some mode of editing dictated by his 
own fancy. ( )n the contrary, the most expert intelligence available 
by the nation was first to consider with deliberate care the question 
what most needed to be done, and was then to devise a general and 
relatively permanent plan for doing it. The immediate result was a 
hi.rjhly interesting survey, exhibiting clearly the relative documenta- 
tion of the different parts or phases of Dutch history. The future 
result will be a well-ordered system of volumes and series, bv which 
gaps will be filled and existing collections supplemented, so that in the 

' A paper read before the Columbian Historical Society of Washington. D. C. 

- Commissie van Adz-ies voor 's Rijks Gcschicdkundige Publicati'en, Oversicht 
'■an de door Bninnenpublicalie aan tc 'ullcn Lccmtcn dcr Nederlandsche Geschied- 
kcnnis (Hague, Nijhoff, 1904. pp. ix, 108). 

(817) 






<S 1 8 J. P. Jameson 

end the original sources for the national history may be evenly 
presented. 

In reading- such a survey, it was impossible not to be struck with 
the thought, how largely the method followed was applicable to the 
United States. For our briefer history, though the national govern- 
ment has done relatively little, much documentary material has 
already been published. I kit much yet remains to be done, and we 
are proceeding to do it without system or order. Executive depart- 
ments of the federal government, or clerks of Congressional com- 
mittees, conceive and execute documentary compilations ; but all is 
casual and miscellaneous. More than half the state governments are 
publishing or have published historical materials ; and no two have 
followed the same plan. Historical societies are prone to publish 
what seems at the mciment most interesting or most available, pro- 
vided of course it is of date anterior to 1783, at which date for most 
of them American history comes to an end ; certainly they seldom pay 
an}- regard to what other historical societies are doing. Many 
zealous individuals have added and are adding to the mass of valuable 
documentary print ; but still in a casual manner. The result is chaos. 
Some parts of our history are relatively oversupplied with original 
nialerial, while others are in this regard neglected, and therefore 
remain unwritten, or are left a prey to those writers who do not need 
documentary material in order to compose historical volumes. 
Figuratively speaking, we have bought enormous quantities of sup- 
plies for our excavations, we have engaged our workers, we have 
dug deeply here and there ; but we have " made the dirt My " licfore 
we have niapped our isthmus. Or. to varv the metaplKir but still 
keep near to the earth, one great region of our national domain, the 
historical region, is still, so far as i)rin-iary labors are concerned, 
largely an unsurveycd tract, subject to squatter settlenient and 
squatter .sovereignty. Would it not be more rational to take a lesson 
from the methodical procedure of the Dutch? 

It would be both futile and presum]_ituous for an individual stu- 
dent to attemjit, in any length of time, to make for his countrv so 
well-rounded a survey as that which has resulted from the joint 
labors of the Dutch commission. \'et it has seemed possible that, 
without attempting a detailed survey of the field, one might bv a 
hasty sketch contriljute to the evening's entertainnient of a historical 
society, and perhaps suggest some thoughts that others might at a 
later time elaborate and even execute. It should be fully understood 
that in this sketch there is no thought of general histories or of mono- 
graphs, of the (|uestion whetlur on this or that subject a historical 



Gaps in Ihtblishcd Records of L 'uitcd States History S19 

work has nr lias nut been written. 'I"1k' sole thouglit is of that |)rior 
and more funthinicntal question, what niati-rials exist and are avail- 
able for the treatment of the suliject. assumiiin- that some one shcuild 
wish to write upon it, or that, if already dealt with, it has not been 
treated in the lig-ht of all the evidence procurable. Suppose that 
notliing- had \et been written on American history; in what state are 
the materials for attackin.c; it? In order to have any practical 
ntilit\. such an in(|uiry, it should also be observed, presupiioses that 
we confine ourselves to materials which, however difficult of access 
or of use, still do exist. An absolutely even documentation of 
American historv is not to be lioped for. W'e will limit ourselves to 
the consideration of the problem, how to do the best possible with 
that which the ravage's of time, of war, of paper-makers, and of 
housewives liave spared to us. 

Xor can there be any thon,<;ht of ilealinp; with all the periods and 
subdivisions of American history. Onh' an illustrati\'e selection can 
lie attemiited. If that selection is made mainh- in the field of con- 
stitutional and political history, let no one make it a matter of re- 
proach. Tt may well be that the historical writers of the next genera- 
tion will la\' all their emphasis on social and economic histor\'. In 
France and Germany the tendency is already strong in this direction, 
and among us one sees the pendulum lieginning to swing that wav. 
Each age has its own fashion in the writing of history. " Historical 
writing", said ]Mark Pattison, "is one of the most ephemeral forms 
of literary composition." But even after the tide has set in the 
direction of economic and social history strongly, even violentlv. as is 
the manner of American currents, even in that socialistic millenniinn 
toward which we are no doubt advancing, it is to be ho])ed that 
students, however fascinated with the narrative and the theorv of 
social movement, however penetrated with the conviction that eco- 
nomic forces have controlled all human destinies, will \et reiuemlier 
that for the last four hundred years the actual form in which human 
life has mainly run its course has been that of the nation. Perhaps 
we are approaching a period in which the leading organization of 
mankind shall lie the industrial, when the uni<jn of unions or the war 
of trusts shall be more important than the union of states or the 
conllict of nations. lUit the whole course of American histor\ thus 
far has lain in the era of nations, during which the most potent and 
visible unity of human affairs was the political. It seems then need- 
less to apologize if, in a discussion of the materials for American 
history, printed and unprirted, one speaks pri^i arily of those which 



820 J. F. Ja))icsoii 

relate to the constitutional and political history of the L'nited States 
and of the colonies out of which they grew. 

Beginning with the colonial period, it is first of all to be observed, 
how far from adequate is our supply of published materials for the 
history of British control and administration. First in logical order 
stand the King and the Privy Council, and first perhaps among the 
desiderata is a properly edited series into which shall be drawn off 
from the manuscript records in Loudon all those acts of the I'riv\- 
Council, or orders of the King in Council, and accompanying papers, 
which relate in any way to the British colonies in America. The 
Acts of the Prizy Council have been for some time in process of 
publication liy the British government. But now that the series is 
a])proaching the accession of James T. and the period when it wotild 
be useful to students of American history, we are told that it will 
not be extended beyond the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. All 
the more reason why the American entries in the subsequent period 
should be drawn off and published, that we may have a complete 
and C(insecuti\e record of the doings of what was once the highest 
administrative and in most matters the highest judicial body of our 
government. Such a scries is not limited, by the phrase used above, 
to the thirteen colonies of the mainland, and it should not be so lim- 
ited. There is no more fruitful source of error, or at least of incom- 
plete understanding, in respect to the British colonial administration 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than the habit of con- 
fining attention to those thirteen colonies which finally established 
their independence. The only rational mode is to consider that 
administration as a whole, as a system embracing sometimes colonies 
to the northward and always a gro\ip of insular colonies to the south- 
ward, some of them usually more regarded, as elements in the svs- 
tem, than most of the colonies on the mainland. Accordingly our 
proposed series of A'cts and Papers of the King in Council relating 
to America should not fail to include those entries in the registers 
of the Privy Council which refer to the West-Indian and other col- 
onics of Great Britain as well as those which have to do with the 
affairs of the "' ( )ld Thirteen ". Nor should the series stop with 
1776, nor even with 1783, when the thirteen colonies were acknowl- 
edged to be outside of llritish colonial jurisdiction. On the con- 
trary, it should be continued to 181 5, for in those thirty years (;f 
warfare with France many Orders in Council besides those most 
famous orders of November, 1807, were of moment to American his- 
tory. Also, it should of course embrace the relevant acts of the 
Council of State under the Commouwealth. 



Ga/>s in Piiblis/icd Rcconts of L 'nitcd States History S2 i 

Similarly, we should have a scries of the royal proclamations 
relating' to the colonies. 1 lere. it n)a\ he said, we are on a some- 
what (litterent groimd. heeause r(i\al ])roclamations were printed. 
I'ut thev were printed in so small a numher of copies that it would 
prohahlv be utterly impossible for even the richest and most deter- 
mined collector to possess himself df a cnniplete set of those useful 
to American history. Sr.ch print stands for our present purposes on 
the same basis as manuscript. It may he said that from 1666, when 
the London Gazette he.ijan, we are in a better position, since ])r()ela- 
mations were printed in its pat^es and do m.it have tn be se|iarately 
sought for: but apparenth' only one American library contains a 
perfect file of that peridclical. 

Xext perhaps in I(\L;ical order to the records of the Privy Ciumcil 
stand the journals of the Uoard of Trade. The records of this 
advisory board, indispensable toward an imderstandinjj of colonial 
p()Iicy, must some time he printed. I'or the present it is less neces- 
sary than some other tasks, because by the public-spirited action of 
certain friends of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania that society 
has been provided with an excellent transcript of the wlnde JDurnal, 
in several scores of volumes of manuscript, wdiieh can always be con- 
sulted in Philadelphia. Ultimately however printing' must he con- 
templated, though it is always more difficult in America to fiml the 
means for publishing documentary material that relates to all the 
colonies than that which relates to onlv one. 

Parliamentary legislation for the col(inies, as distinguished from 
administrative regulation, is, it is true, already all in print, and sets 
of the British statutes at large are not rare. Yet it would be verv 
convenient if we had, separated from the mass and brought together 
in one Ijook, all the acts of Parliament relating to America. The 
same is true of the relevant ])ortions of the Journals of the House 
of Lords and of the House of Commons, sets of which are few in 
the L'nited States, and of the reports of the debates on American 
sul)jects. It is perhai)S commonly sup]iose<l that all of this last ma- 
terial is in the earlier volumes of Hansard's Pclmtcs. lUit without 
going into the complicated bibliography of the pre-Hansardian Par- 
liamentary rei)orts, it ma)' l)e saiil that this is far from lieing the ease. 

Let us pass now from the general matters of P>ritish colonial 
polie\' to the establishment and government of [particular colonies. 
It would probably lie su])posed b\- a foreigner who saw our activity 
in historical printing that there must surelv Ije no lack of printed 
collections into which had been gathered all the fundamental docu- 
ments of that government, the grants of soil and jurisdiction, the 



82 2 J. F. Jaii/eson 

constitutions on which tlie right to govern rested. But this is by no 
n'cans true. The charter governments are indeed better provided, 
for it is an easier task to present their fundamental ducunieuts: yet 
rniire is not complete, and Miss Farnham's clab(n"ate compilation 
covers but a part of the area. After all, too, what we need is a com- 
])lete collection of all letters-patent from the crown conveying either 
snil or jurisdiction, either in continental America or in the islands, 
both those which founded important colonies and those which proved 
abortive; fur it is only when the whole series is studied in chrono- 
logical order, not five letters-patent iir thirteen but twoscore or more, 
that the nature and development of the colonial grant are fully seen. 
The grant of .Avalon explains the grant of Maryland ; the charters 
for Guiana and the Isle of Providence illustrate that of Massachu- 
setts Bay. 

So much for the charter colonies. But still greater is the need 
of the fundamental documents in the case of the unchartered colon- 
ies, or royal provinces. Indeed the very difficulty of finding and 
studying their constitutions, in comparison with the ease with which 
charters may in most cases be found and studied, has led to some 
nf the strangest distortions in our colonial history. In reading the 
pages of many writers one would sujipose that the charter govern- 
ment was nearly the universal type of colonial constitution, whereas, 
when one sto]is to think, only five of the thirteen cr)lonies were living 
under charters in 1775. For the others, the royal provinces, the 
fundamental documents of the constitution were the roi,-al commis- 
sions and instructions to the governors. Comparatively few of the 
commissions have been printed, still fewer of the instructions, and 
those that have been printed are widely scattered. Yet without 
thorough study and comjiarison of them it is impossible to under- 
stand that intricate coiii1)inatiou of the written ;uid the unwritten, 
of the British and the colonial, wdiich formed the typical constitution 
of the chief class of American colonies, and to which we look for 
the genesis of the main features of the subsec|ueut state constitutions. 

lUit we must not forget that our origins, even our constitutional 
and ])olitical origins, are not all English. Of forty-five states, nianv 
have known b'rench or .S]5anish domination, and the scribe of docu- 
ments playi'd at least as large a part under the b'reuch regime, and 
under the S])anish colonial system a much larger part, than under 
the Fngiish. The archives of old I-"rance and of Xew h'rance, those 
of Madrid and Simancas, ;in(l most of all the Archi\'es of the Indies 
at Seville, contain the luatu'ials for many documentary series which 
are needed for the understan;!ing of the historv (if Illinois and Louis- 



Gaps in Publislicd Records of United States History S23 

iana. nf I'lorida and Texas. 'Flu- ailmiiiistrativc systems nf France 
and Spain differed widely from that of iMiLjiand, the ci>lc.)nies had 
ninch less autonomy, and there are com]:)Hcations due to the snhor- 
(Unation of the colonies now l.\ing within the borders of the L'nited 
States to superior authorities like those of the viceroyalty of Xew 
Spain or the captain-generalcy of l"ul)a. Under these Latin regimes 
we cannot so readily draw the line between what is constitutional 
and what is merely administrative regulation. Yet it is not too 
much to hope that we may some time have a complete collection of 
edicts of the l""rench crown touching Louisiana and the Illinois re- 
gion, similar to Moreau de St. ?\Iery's Lo'ix ct Constitutions, or for 
the Spanish rule a series of the orders and warrants of the crown for 
the colonies (real ordciics and ccdulas), or of the proceedings, de- 
crees, and despatches icoiisiiltiu. dccrctos, and dcspaclws) of the 
audiencias and of the Council of the Indies. 

To propose such clefinite and homogeneous series from foreign 
archives is to propose an unusual course of procedure. The com- 
iniin plan has been for a state government or a historical society, on 
hearing that in a foreign archive there was a group of volumes con- 
taining interesting materials for the history of their locality, to send 
at once and have them copied, and pruceed tn print, regardless of 
the miscellaneous character of what they fnuml or of the question 
whether all had been found. For such a haphazard and piecemeal 
policy there was some excuse in the past, but there will be none in 
the futiu'e. The great European archives are no longer disordered 
masses, from the surface of which one had better pluck up what he 
could while he saw it, lest it never emerge to the surface again. 
Thev can be exhaustively explored ; an<l b\' the plans which the 
Department of Historical Research in the Carnegie Institution is 
following, all the important materials that they contain f<ir the his- 
tnrv of the L'nited States or any part thereof wdll within a few years 
be discovered, listed, and descril:)e<l. It will then be possible to select 
and print what is needed in order to make up a relatively complete 
chronological series of homogeneous documents of any given type. 

Doulitless the political history of the colonies lends itself less per- 
fectly than the constitutional to the composition of such methodical 
series. Yet here also some order can be introduced, in the gathering 
of spoils from European archives. If we ask ourselves, in the English 
case, what political series ma}- claim for itself the foremost place, it is 
likely that the choice would fall on the letters which colonial gov- 
ernors wrote to the authorities in London, a series of documents fre- 
quent and continuous throughout the whole period, composed under 



824 J. F. Jameson 

official responsibility and by men wlio, tlmugli SDnictimes prcjudiccil, 
were in an excellent ])osition for oliservation of the events of colonial 
liistorv. lUit large numbers of these letters have already been 
printed, more or less systematically, especially in the case of New 
Hampshire, Xew ^'ork, and North Carolina. an<l of snme individual 
governors, such as Sharpe, .Spotswood, and Dinwiddle. For this 
reason it might be a better plan to take in liand the almost untouched 
series in the Hritish archives of letters and despatches from the mili- 
tary and naval commanders in America, or the papers of the com- 
missioners of customs for the colonies, full of new information re- 
specting the plantation trade, the importance of which is now better 
appreciate<l than e\'er before, as the commercial causes for the Amer- 
ican Revolution are assuming greater and greater prominence in the 
minds of historical writers. 

There is also an internatidual class of histurical docimiL-nts. ol)vi- 
ouslv of the first importance, a compact collection of which is an 
undoubted desideratum, and that is the treaties and conventions be- 
tween European powers which have a bearing on American history. 
The mass of them is not great. (Jften it is but a small part of a 
treatv that has reference to American affairs. Old-world diploma- 
tists might higgle with minute detail over the frontier villages of 
Flanders or Alsace, and throw away half a transatlantic continent in 
a phrase. Tint the specific gravity of this material, so to speak, is 
e-xceptionallv great, as the history of many colonial wars will testify. 
It is hard, however, for the student to obtain it. Treaties were 
]irinted, it is true. Hut they have often not been printed anywhere 
with perfect accurac}'. and they can now only be found imbedded in 
great and expensive collectinns, and sometimes not even there. 
Probably no human being in njo,^ wrote five pages on the cession of 
I_^ouisiana without mentioning the treaty of San Ildefonso. It is 
fundamental to a great boundary dispute; but probably not forty 
histiirical scholars in the I'nited .States have ever seen its full text. 
(It happens not to be in Alartens's Rcciicil.) The lack of a schol- 
arly edition of all these treaties and parts of treaties is however 
being supplied by the appropriate department of the Carnegie Insti- 
titinn. 

It is time now to pass to the American shores, and to consider 
what deficiencies are to be noted in the supply of historical material 
for our individual colonies. The first to be mentioned is one that 
would seem scarcely credible, in a country where so much historical 
printing has been done. .Any one would say that among the prime 
requisites for intelligent work upmi the history of our developnicnt 



Gaps hi Published Records of I 'nited States History 825 

during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries we should have 
given a prominent place to the laws of our colonies and to the jour- 
nals of their legislative assenihlies. TUit first as to the laws. Five 
states. \'irginia, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, and 
I'enns\lvania, have provided the historical student with good sets of 
their statutes at large for the colonial period or even to the early 
dax's of the nineteenth century, and so has Connecticut in a way. 
Maryland and New Hampshire have begun to fill the gap. But 
unhappy the man wdio tries to follow the course of legislation in the 
other colonies. The Public Record Commissioners of New Jersey 
a few vears ago declared that there did not exist in that common- 
wealth a complete set of the laws of the colony, province, and state ; 
and in the case of Delaware and Rhode Island it is no longer pos- 
sible to make good the deficiency. Authenticated copies of the 
earlier laws of those two colonies do not exist either in the state 
capitals or in London. Even in some cases where the laws have 
all been printed in usable collections, the records of disallowances 
b\- the English crown are fatall}' incomplete. 

Ijut with the legislative journals of the lower houses of assembly 
the case is much worse. The student has access to those of New 
Hampshire and North Carolina in modern editions, fairly complete ; 
to those of jMarvland to the end of the seventeenth century, to those 
of New Jersey for seven years, to those of \'irginia fi ir three. For 
Connecticut and for forty years of the earlier ]>eriod of Massachu- 
setts historv he has journals of the General Court, or records of the 
doings of the legislature as a whole, with wdiich he can make shift 
to content himself. For Rhode Island he has what is little more 
than a bmlv of extracts. Substantiall)-. then, lie has before him 
hardl}- more than a third of the record. The rest still exists only in 
manuscript or in print almost as rare as manuscript. For Delaware 
nothing exists. A few fortunate liljraries contain the complete sets 
for New York and Pennsylvania, which printed their assembly jour- 
nals in goodly volumes. Mrginia has begun the issue of a stately 
series which will ultimately give us the whole record of the House 
of Burgesses, the most important of colonial assemblies. Maryland 
is proceeding with the matter. Georgia is perhaps about to take it 
up. after a fashion. But Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South 
Carolina should lose no time in instituting such series, without which 
large portions of their colonial history are bound to lack definite 
substance and reality ; Rhode Island should make her series com- 
l)lete : and New York and Pennsylvania should reprint. 

AM msl'. i< I- v., Vi'l XI. — 54. 



826 J. F. Jameson 

( )iiL' more desideratum of the colonial period must be mentioned, 
though its magnitude is such as to cause hesitation. Yet no one can 
doubt that the social history of the colonial period can never be 
conveniently studied or adequately known so long as the supply of 
colonial newspapers lies in its present unsatisfactory shape. There 
were nearly forty newspapers in the United Colonies in 1775. Of 
some but a few scattered copies remain, of others there are complete 
files. There are numerous subjects of our social history in the ante- 
Revolutionary period which so run through the various colonies that 
they cannot be treated adequately without full examination of all of 
this sort of material that has survived. Yet the writer believes that 
there is but one man who, in the pursuit of any subject, has ever 
had the requisite determination and ])atience to carry through an 
examination of newspapers which required journeys to Boston on 
tlie north and to Savannah on the south, so widely scattered are the 
files that he must inspect. Moreover, some of the best of these will 
certainly vanish if steps are not soon taken for their preservation bv 
reprint. Thirty years ago there were two good files of the J'iri^iiiiii 
Grt-Ct'/^c' ; now there are none. There is one superb set of the South 
Carolina Ga::cttc ; as it is not in a fire-proof building, its fate is plain. 
No doubt it is a great expense to reproduce a file of a colonial news- 
])a])er, either by print or by photography. Hut does it seem as if an 
age that had produced Fads and Fancies could possibly profess in- 
ability to float an expensive book ? 

lint it is time to turn to the history of the American Revolution, 
Numberless subjects of colonial history, numerous opportunities for 
documentary publication, have been passed over in silence. It will 
perhaps have been observed that nothing has been said of all the 
process of discovery and exploration, that happy-hunting-ground of 
the history-writing mind. Let it be attributed to a conviction that 
here, if anywhere, the suj.iply of original material is relativelv ade- 
quate. The workl has been raked fine for documents relating to that 
age of the Argonauts, and nothing would suft'er if we allowed those 
heroes to rest in their present state of documentation, while we de- 
voted ourselves to catching tip with other classes of transactions 
and of luaterial. 

It may well be maintained that much the same is true of the 
American Revolution. To the mind of the average American legis- 
lator, for some obscure reason, the words " American history " denote 
almost always the history of American wars, and especially of the 
Revolutionary war. Therefore it has been comparatively easy to 
persuade the assemblies of our states to make appropriations for the 



(?iips ill riiblishcd Records of I 'nitcd States Hu^tory S27 

printing' of docnnicnts rclatini;- ti> that interesting contlict. Ne\er- 
lhck>s what woulil seem to he the most fundamental documentary 
series, a complete edition of the general orders of Washington as 
commander-in-chief, remains unexecuted. For the naval warfare, 
which in certain years at any rate was perhaps as important and as 
decisive as that which tonk p'ace on land, our supply of material is 
relativelv scanty, though the naval papers of the Continental Con- 
gress and the vast unexplored masses of the British Admiralty pajiers 
would furnish ahundant material for illustrating even a warfare con- 
sifting so largely <if detached episodes. Probably the huge fragment 
of Force's Archives ought on some improved plan or other to be 
])iece(I out to its coniiiletion. Until little more than a year ago we 
should ha\'e had to confess that we had only a most incomplete edi- 
tion of so primar\- a record as the Joiinuils of the Continental i 011- 
i^ress. But now, thanks to the sujierh ei|uipment and patient labors 
of r\lr. Wortbington Ford, we are being sup|)lied liy the Lilirary of 
Congress with what is substantially a perfect edition of that invalu- 
able body of material. We shall never be able to supplement that 
journal with th.e debates, as we are accustnmL-d to do in the case of 
modern congresses. Yet a series has been devised, and is being 
executed by another agency in this city, which will supplement in a 
manner almost as vivacious the formal reC'ird of proceedings. It 
was the habit of many if not most delegates to the Continental Con- 
gress to send home at frequent intervals to their state executives, or 
to other local authorities, long letters or reports upon the transactions 
of the Congress. These are being collected from their official rejiosi- 
tories in a dozen dit¥erent states and, when all brought together in a 
chronological series, will illuminate the transactions of each week 
bv side-lights var\ ing with the individual angle, yet forming in com- 
bination, it is hoped, a supplementary light of the greatest value. 
Another desideratum, in the case of several states, is a proper pres- 
entation of the journals of their constitutional and other conven- 
tions. Also, for this jieriiid and for those which have followed it, 
we sorely need a new edition, revised and brijught down to our time, 
of Poore's Charters and Constitutions. 

For the Constitutional Convention of 1787 we have long liad the 
primary records in reasonably good shape, on the one hand the 
Journal and on the other hand ^ladison's incomparable record of the 
debates ; and lately these have been reprinted in a form which rivals 
the preciseness and almost exceeds the difficulty of a facsimile text. 
But Madison's notes have been supplemented from time to time by 
those of lesser diarists — Yates, King. Pierce, Paterson, Flamilton, 



828 J. F. JaincsiVi 

and now ;\IcHenry — and documents have come to light that mark 
stages in the progress of the convention's work or otlierwise illustrate 
the making of the Constitution. There is needed a complete and 
scientific edition of the Records of the Philadelphia Convention, 
which shall bring together fn.)m their various volumes these frag- 
mentary sup].)lements to the main narratives and shall arrange all the 
data, old and new, side by side under the da\s or parts of days or 
phases of the discussion to which they relate. It is a jileasure to be 
able to say that this work is being done, and done too in a manner 
certain to satisfy the needs of scholars. 

The federal government of the United States, from its installa- 
tion in 1789, has never been seriously remiss in the ])rinting of the 
annual records of its transactions, w'hether legislative or executive. 
.•\t times the suspicion has not been lacking that it printed too much. 
At all events, the task of him who would suggest gaps in the his- 
torical record of the central governri^ent is lightened when we pass 
that celebrated year. Nevertheless it has been demonstrated by ex- 
ceedingly careful examination that the volumes devoted to Foreign 
Relations in the fnlici series of the .liiicricaii Slate I'af'crs do not 
embrace more than one-fourth of the material, for the period which 
they cover, in the diplomatic archives of the Department of State. 
Here then is a great work which the government should take up, 
biith for the large amount of fresh material which it will afford to 
the student of our history, and also for the illumination and guidance 
which it may give to the conduct of our national relations with other 
states. .Such a series, however, should not merely eml.)race the fifty 
years of history covered by the American State Papers, but should 
be brought down to the outbreak of the Civil \\'ar : for it is well 
known to all students of our diplomatic history that for the years 
from 1840 to i860 even those documents which are in ])rint are hard 
to procure in unbroken series and hard to manage when procured. 

There are also a few great deficiencies in the earliest legislative 
records which need to be sui)])lied. The .liiiials of r(';/,^')v.M, like the 
Histoire Parlementaire of the French National Assembly, were ap- 
parently made U]) from but a few news]iapers. A much better ac- 
count of the earlier debates, anterior to the founding of the Xational 
I)itelligeiieer, could probably be supplied by a compilation from a 
greater number of pajjers. ^Vhat is certain is that, as is doubtless 
familiar, the earlier debates of the Senate are almost entirely un- 
reported, h'or the first five years the .Senate of the Cnited States 
sat with closed doors. l'"or the first two years, to be sure, we have 
the debates recorded in the diarv of one of the senators. Perhaps 



Gaps in Piibiishcd Records of United Slates History 8 29 

we ouglit to be grateful for what he has given us. But prohal)l\- 
most persons have felt quite as much exasperation as gratitude at the 
thought that our sole record of those interesting, nuimentous, and 
formative discussions should come to us from the sullen, mean, and 
envious mind of Senator William Maclay. " All things look yellow 
t<i the jaundiced e\c." Discussion of materials that do not exist 
was from the beginning ruled out of this paper ; but it may be par- 
donable to express a devout and earnest hope that somewhere there 
exists another journal of those Senatorial proceedings and that in the 
future it may he laid liefore the world. It can hardly fail to be a 
fairer as well as a more generous record. 

In the documentary material for the history of the L'nited States 
in the nineteenth century, that age of copious print, it would be vain 
to pretend that there are gaps of the greatest magnitude to be signal- 
ized. To enumerate a great number of small deficiencies would be 
tedious. It may suffice to speak hy way of specimen of two or three 
episodes in our history on which more light might well be shed. For 
one, and an extremel}- interesting one, there is the history of the 
striking process by which South Can^lina, from being in the last 
years of the eighteenth century a Federalist state, came by 1830 to 
be the leader of the extreme state-rights school and the protagonist 
of sectional interests. The process remains an obscure one. The 
theory that Calhoun, disappointed in his ambition for the presidency 
by reason of his quarrel with Jackson, persuaded his whole state into 
the new path, is now well seen to be untenable ; for it is plain that 
South Carolina led Calh<iun rather than Calhoun South Carolina. 
I'lir the same reason, there is equally little disposition to adopt Mr. 
Henr\- Adams's view, in accordance with which Calhoun was be- 
guiled l)y the titful ignis fatuus that rose from the decaying brain of 
John Randolph as he inflicted his wayward harangues upon the 
Senate, while the impassive Carolinian sat in the A'ice-president's 
chair and transmuted the hectic utterances into the cold logic of the 
nullification theor\'. I'ailing such theories as these, wt are forced to 
ask for more light, for more ample publication of Carolinian resolves, 
speeches, editorials, and private correspondence in the years between 
1790 and 1S30. 

For a second instance, though the national government has put 
forth abundantly the documents of its own civil and military history 
and of the military history of the Confederacy, the stores of docu- 
mentarv material of the civil government of the Confederacy to 
which it fell heir at the conclusion of the struggle still for the most 
part await publication. The Journals of the Confederate Congress 



830 J. t. Jameson 

art- imk'Cil bcinc^ laid before lis. Ijut we iieeil to know more of the 
history of Secretary Benjamin's diplomacy, of the struggle for recog- 
nition, of the operations of the treasury, and of its relations to the 
economic life of the seceded states.' 

Lastly, it may be permissible to say a few words respecting pos- 
sible further publications of the private correspondence of eminent 
public men. Perhaps we are hardly warranted in speaking of gaps 
here, at least in the sense in which we can use the phrase when 
speaking of a governmental ofifice or a legislative body which main- 
tains a continuous record of its proceedings, so that if any part of it 
ii not present in the printed series we allege a gap in the literal sensc 
of the term. Yet there are some statesmen whose position is so im- 
])ortant or so peculiar that if we lack their correspondence or memoirs 
we feel that we lack the key to many of the chief transactions of their 
age ( )f all the Americans of the earlier period, there are perhaps 
none whose correspondence we so distinctly need as the two Adamses. 
From the elder we have a ten-volume edition of his Works. But it 
contains after all very little of his correspondence, and those letters 
are so vivacious that they shine out in a formal age, and compel us 
to wish eagerly for more. Of the younger Adams, while we have the 
invaluable Memoirs, surely one of the most remarkable of political 
<liaries, we have almost no letters, though he wrote well and often, 
during a long and varied public career. In both cases, too, we should 
find our profit quite as largely in the letters written to the two Presi- 
dents, and preserved in the same repository, as in the letters which 
they themselves wrote. 

Aside from John Adams, the chief desideratum for the ])eriod of 
the Revolution might seem to l)e a new edition of the letters of 
Richard Henry Lee, for the man was of high abilities and undeniably 
interesting, while the existing edition of his Life and Correspondence 
is one of the most ])reposteroi:s, disorderly, and unusable of bonks. 
In the next period, we really suffer much from the lack of any full 
b(i(K I if material on the Southern Federalists. We have only Ire- 
dell, and he was a judicial character. I"or lack of a full disclosure, 
such as the papers of James A. Bayard might afford us, many have 
been obliged to persist in the misrepresentation that the I'"ederalist 
jiartv was an aggregation of Xew-Fnglanders, although it is proli- 
able lliat, if the whole story were before us, we should perceive that 
the Aliddle-state and Southern Federalists had fiu-nished the parly 
with most of that ballast of moderate wisdom which its heady Xorth- 

' Mr. .1. D. Ricli.nrdsoii's Coin/Dilation of the Mcssngcs and Papers of the Con- 
federacy ( N'asliville, lyciS) lias now p.Trtly filled this gap. 



Gaps in PublisJied Records of Ciiitcd States History S31 

ern leaders so much needed, and witli nuich <.if the momentum which 
enabled it to do its great work. 

The list might readily l>e carried down to more modern times. It 
is needless to say with how much delight we shall all greet the publi- 
cation of the papers of Andrew Jackson ; but of this we are already 
certain. The papers of A'an I'.uren and Polk are already assured of 
preservation. Their publication will surely illuminate many obscure 
places in our political history. In the period of the Civil War it is 
ehietl\- the papers of the principal Southern leaders, and above all of 
Davis and Stephens, that we most need in order to complete our 
materials ; and on the Northern side those of the dissentient radicals 
like Wade and Thaddeus Stevens and Henry Winter Davis. 

We are not infrecjuently invited to take a gloomy view of the 
future of the historian. We are told that the economist and the 
sociologist are steadily plucking away his most valuable feathers, and 
that our venerable muse is losing the fairest portions of her domain 
to far vounger sciences, of which Herodotus and Thucydides never 
heard and to which, indeed, they mig-ht not have felt attracted. But 
at least it will be clear that in America the purveyor or editor of 
documentarv materials for history has sufficient occupation for the 
immediate future, and much opportunity to persevere in the endeavor 
to secure for his science at least a broad and solid basis. 

T. Fr.vnklin Jameson. 



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